Death did not chase people. It didn't have to, people thought it did. They would always look back with fear at the ever closer end and think it was after them.

As if Death didn't have other things to do.

Well, it didn't.

But Death certainly didn't chase. He chased people the same way the ground chased the rain or how the sea would chase the river.

No, Death didn't chase, but it did wait and people would come raining down on him eventually, all on their own time.

Why would he care if you came now or later. All would come eventually.

Some wouldn't but that didn't bother him.

Death stood there, watching the young man struggle out of his cold and rotting body.

"Well then," the young man spoke. "Is this it?"

"Yes," Death replied.

"This is the end?" The man asked, looking down at his broken and bundled corpse.

"I believe so," the reaper replied.

"What a shame," the man said, waving his arm over his body.

"What a right and evil shame this is! Look at me! They barely left my skin on!"

"I believe they were going to peel it off if you were still awake," Death replied.

"Oh definitely," said the man.

He was a cultivator, a man of the third rank. He was a soldier to a rotten empire and he, along with a few other men, had died while attempting a revolution.

This world could only create people of the fourth rank at most, Death thought.

The man looked around for a moment, watching as two burly men came and picked up his corpse, throwing it into a burlap sack as if it were trash meant to be tossed out.

"Was it all a waste?" The man asked Death. "Was it for nothing?"

Death took a moment to think about this. He was an Imperium. He was one of the strongest beings in all of existence and yet here was talking to a practical nobody.

But it made sense to Death.

"Yes," Death replied. "Your rebellion is absolutely pointless in the face of it all, as is your suffering."

"And the kingdom? Is it doomed?" The man asked.

"It will be sacrificed by your King to create an immortal demon pill. Your King will reach the Immortal Rank and kill all life in this realm during the process."

The man slumped back. He took the news well. Souls often did that. The dead were not very good at living, and feeling was very much a living thing.

"Oh well. At least I tried."

"Yes," Death replied. "You did."

"Do you know what he'll do next? The king, I mean."

"He will try to leave the realm and eventually succeed, only to be eaten by an ant afterwards."

"What? An ant? There are ants that can eat immortals?"

"Yes," Death replied.

"Ha, serves him right!" The man laughed.

But there was no humor in it. No real changing emotion, only the driving memory of what was. A soul was not a person after all.

"Couldn't you stop it?" The man asked Death.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"Yes, but it is not in my nature."

"Don't you care?" The man asked.

It seemed like the soul had not quite grasped its nature yet. It moved with emotion, with a sense of morality that simply was not there.

It thought it was alive but it wasn't. Caring, feeling, loving, those were living things.

"I do care, but I can not intervene."

"Why not?" The man asked.

"I do not rule the living."

"That's it? If you really care then you'd stop the suffering! Help us mortals out when we need it!"

"But," Death said, gesturing down to the tortured and nearly scattered corpse in the sack.

"I did," Death finished.

The man looked back at the sack and squinted, as if he was trying to remember something.

"It hurt," he whispered. "I remember it hurting. It was real bad, but--"

He patted his arms up and down.

"--It-- I don't really care anymore. Why is that?"

"You are dead," Death stated. "The dead do not suffer."

"What about Hell and all that stuff?"

Death shook his head.

"That is the place of the other Death, only if you are taken by the judges do you receive that."

"You mean there are other Deaths?"

"Yes."

"Is there a Heaven, then?"

"Yes.

"Could I go there?"

"I do not believe you would meet their requirements."

"Heavens for the fancy ones then?" The man asked.

"It is for the ones the judges deem righteous."

"And the rest of us can go to hell then?" The man asked.

"No."

"No?"

"Hell takes any it can get, both living and dead but not everybody."

"But you just said-"

"Hell is a place of suffering, but the pain of a mortal does not satiate it. It can breed mortals if it seeks them. It looks for the strong and capable, to make them suffer would give those demons strength. But we do not permit either Heaven or Hell."

"We?" The man asked. "There's another place."

Curiosity always seemed to be the last emotion to fully flare out of people. It always stuck around longer than anything else in the dead.

"No," Death answered.

Then they floated, the man too confused but too dead to even think about doing anything else. And Death stood there and let the currents carry them away.

It was a small stream at first, a bit of water running out of the realm. The small creek of souls left the realm and joined up with something bigger on the outside.

A small river carried them out and about.

The man turned and looked down into the river.

Several fish were swimming viciously against the currents. They were trying to escape and outswim it. Sometimes, they fell and other times they scampered onto another part of the river

They were sharing a metaphysical place now. From here Death could see the shores and saw the thief fishing away in the distance.

He didn't hate the thief. They were opposites in some ways. One safeguarding the river and the other fighting it. But they were the same in other ways. Both helped, at least from their own perspective.

"So, are there a lot of Deaths?" The man asked.

"Many."

"How many?"

"Far too many."

"Oh wow," the man mumbled. "Is there a king then? A king of Deaths?"

The man was surprisingly cogent for a mortal. Most people wouldn't be able to get this far down the river before simply crumbling into qi.

"Yes," Death replied.

"Really? Who is it?"

"Me."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"Huh, do you do this often then? Collecting souls I mean."

"It is the job."

"Then, why me? Or do you do this for everybody?"

"I was simply passing by," Death answered.

"But there must have been thousands of people dying at the same time I was. Why me specifically?"

"You were in the most pain."

"That matters?" The man asked.

"It does to me."

They kept floating, the small river merging into a larger one. Suddenly they were rushing, quickly being taken by the currents and pushed out into the rapids.

But the mortal hung on.

"But why?" He asked.

The river rushed out into a raging rapid, pushing them out to the sea. Death saw the mortal struggling to cling on. It was noteworthy, if only barely.

And so for a moment, out of something akin to kindness but not quiet, Death answered.

"I am the end, the First Death, the King of Oblivion," he declared.

"I was born as the first thing died. As soon as life ended I came to be. I was feared, hated, despised, and fought off. But I was always there trailing after life. Some worshipped me, if only to evade me or control me. Some sought me out in madness and others cut down their fellows as sacrifices."

The man listened while parts of him faded away while just enough remained to still wonder.

"But only the suffering truly call for me and it is only them I can aid. To everything else, I am a plague or an old friend, but to the tormented I am a savior."

The man was gone now, or at least the part of him that hadn't been in this conversation. His name, life, family, friends, all of that had been erased from the contents of his mind.

"And I was suffering?" The man asked.

"You were," Death replied.

The thing that had been the man nodded. It was just a shadow now, just the absence of something and not the thing itself.

"I remember that," it said with surprise. "Why do I remember that?"

"Pain is not easily forgotten," Death answered.

"Is it really all that different then? Is pain really all that special?"

"Oh yes," Death answered. "It is what you call evil. It is the peel of the fruit of life. Fighting through it and surpassing it is what gives you humans purpose. And like all things, it is a thing I end."

"So you came because I asked you too?"

Death nodded and the shadow of a man looked out into the nothing. Here he was at the Sea of Death, flaking away into oblivion.

He found nothing in it. No joy or happiness, no reward or gift for his virtue.

But he also found no regret or suffering.

Here in the end, there was no pain.

Then there was no man, just Death.

With a resigning step, Death turned back to take the king. He hated taking people before their time. It was like eating an unripen fruit.

But he would make an exception to the rules occasionally.

Somewhere in that old kingdom, an assassin attacked a king, and somehow against all the rules of battle, he succeeded.

And Death went on.

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